


Move and Strike

by daidoro



Series: Child on Two Fronts [1]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, story spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-05 19:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15870123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daidoro/pseuds/daidoro
Summary: The symptoms of excessive coldsleep include disorientation, fine-motor impairment, and memory loss. Upon awakening, the first Tenno had been under stasis for several thousand years.In most cases, new arrivals require immediate extraction and contact with the Lotus to begin rehabilitation. When this is not possible, they are left with little more than their deeply-trained instincts and a half-forgotten code of honor.What is done out of love, always takes place beyond good and evil.Story spoilers for Warframe.





	1. Libera Nidra

 

* * *

 

Heat, and light.

Then pain.

 

A hard surface, unyielding.

Horrific, excruciating silence.

It is agonizing, and a hand weakly moves- reaching out as if in search of…

Of what?

_ There is no Void,  _ is her first conscious thought.

Where there should be the everpresent, liquid-hot flicker of Void, there is only silence. The lack of it is splitting, like a knife being driven through her mind.

Pushing through the pain, she forces herself to her hands and knees. There is dim light here, coarse red sand upon stone and a familiar low hiss. Gradually, she works her way to her knees and turns toward the sound.

_ A cryopod,  _ she recognizes. The alabaster shell has been shattered, and the glint of golden Forma dulled by wet grime. All around, the decorative mounting has been crushed by the surrounding rock of the chamber. It hangs open like a spent cocoon, slowly leaking wisps of cryo-vapor that trail to the ground and pool in the natural depressions of the stone.

_ I… I was asleep? _

It takes her a further few tries to rise, and she wavers unsteadily. Everything is distant and muddied. Not quite real.

_ Where… what was I doing? _

She can't remember.

_ What… am I doing? _

Light streams from a small opening overhead. Sand, in small dunes that have poured from above. A natural cave, then.

_ Entrance, exits, weapons. Objectives. Something else. _

There is nothing here.

Her limbs tremble as she clambers up the short slope and strains to reach the opening. The light outside is bright, but the glare does nothing to worsen the splitting headache.

 

Outside, there are more eroded rocks, and coarse red sand. Wind-worn cliffs carve into valleys with strange whorls, casting deep shadows from a scorching sun.

Something about this place is familiar, and yet nothing is.

She stumbles through the waste for a time without length, half-remembering the drive to  _ something.  _ She is looking for something.

She  _ knows,  _ when she finds the alien shapes, that this was not it.

They are crude metal, jutting from the wasteland like green tumors. They curve and brace against the harsh environs like armored shells, like scales from some hideous beast.

Their occupants are no different.

She watches them, from behind and above and below. They yell in harsh, guttural bursts that twist occasionally into unrecognizable machine-chatter. They bristle with strange technology- clearly weapons- a universal language of violence unceasingly leveled at their perimeter, toward the red world beyond.

An impossibly long day stretches into night, and still she drags herself weakly through the wasteland. There is nothing here left untouched by the aliens. She slowly climbs and crawls and stumbles through the canyon-shadows and behind the dunes. They are everywhere, and hold guard unceasingly.

She does not need the creature to know their temperament. She sees its death anyway.

A small scale-vermin, too slow to escape from a strolling soldier. The armored alien casually breaks step to plant an armored boot on the creature's tail, and fires a single shot to leave the rest an ugly smear against the ground. The discharge echoes brutally through the cliffs. Other guards come, and exchange their ugly language-sounds before plodding away. Silence returns.

She is looking for something. There is still nothing here.

But something is obvious now. She is not like these beings. Her reflection in the rare pools of cave-water is different. She is made of metal, of graceful armor without ugly flesh to conceal.

Something is thrumming inside her, even in the empty space where the Void should be roiling.

She has  _ hunted  _ before.

She will find what is missing.

 

She moves for a while more before settling on a location. The cliffs here are wound with metal walkways, twisting in and out of the canyon shadows with the jagged stone outcroppings. Patrols are spaced far apart, irregular.

When the next guard walks around the corner, she is waiting.

Its skull of a helmet is twisted violently around, and slammed into the railing for good measure. Before the heavy impact of the soldier's armor can echo back, she has ripped its weapons free from their master and sent the body tumbling over the edge.

She absconds into the shadow, and in the seclusion of a distant crevice examines her prizes.

The weapons are of simple design. A small rifle, cheaply-made of stamped ferrite metals. She experiments with the fastenings until the magazine-release catches, some forgotten instinct giving her weak movements their surety. Only a few sharp-tipped rounds are visible, but she calculates the whole number at a glance.

The other is a stubby blade with a blunted tip. It ignites dully when she grips the handle, a crude containment field holding a yellow plasma along an edge as it burns. The soldier kept it holstered in a section of stretched webbing, low on the back of his armor. Her own body has no means to secure it. She holds it against the side of the rifle, and moves on.

 

Yellow bleeds into dirty orange, then crimson red, then into a fantastic tapestry of stars as the wasteland's blistering day becomes a slimmering night. Silence still stretches within her, but the agony in her head has abated and her limbs have greater strength. She moves still, until the pattern of the aliens breaks and she  _ knows  _ something is different.

 

The previous outposts faced outward, wherever they came to the surface, but this one turns inward, as if the hideous armatures are petals turning toward a light. The soldiers move predictably. She studies them, and follows these patterns too. The sun rises and sets two more times before she finds what they surround.

The canyons here spiral inward, nestled with sentry devices and overlooks. The barrels of massive war-machines peek over distant ridges, and the clanging churn of machinery is constant. In the center, crane-arms and digging machines stretch over a vast chasm, battling the elements to expose something inside.

She doesn't know what it is, but as she peers over the pitted edge of a sandstone outcrop, the lustre of white at the bottom is the first familiar thing she's seen since waking.

Whatever this is, it is  _ hers,  _ in some way she can not define. These cruel wasteland aliens cannot have it.

There are checkpoints and gates and patrols and too many sensors for her to avoid. Instead, she waits for nightfall, waits for the largest patrol group to rotate out. When the relief group arrives, she drops onto them from the canyon wall.

She buries the knife between armor layers at the crook of a neck, effortlessly breaking the fall and turning a different soldier into the line of fire with another motion. Sudden, furious gunfire rakes through the struggling soldier as its fellows react in panic. It all feels distant and familiar at once as she raises her own weapon and answers with a long burst that tears through the two closest aliens.

Alarms are already screaming, and several soldiers clumsily break for cover while the others try to pin her down.

The weapon feels like a toy in her hands. She  _ knows _ somehow that as weak as she is, these rifles are weaker still. A few rounds catch her, but they glance away without more than a flicker of discomfort. She answers with a salvo that cuts down a soldier leaning out of cover and sprays gore across the canyon wall.   
Two more take its place.

By the time she reaches the bottom of the chasm, there are only motionless bodies in the canyon. Alarms echo down from above, but she only has eyes for the object before her. It emerges from the dirt like a fish breaking water, alabaster and gold untarnished. When she runs a hand across its cold surface, her fingers tingle with  _ rightness. _

At her touch the object shudders, and dirt spills away down the side of the pit as it opens, flexing fins and side-plates. A cylindrical piece slides away. She is forced to lay in the dirt to push herself awkwardly into place.

 

The cylinder rotates closed, leaving her in the dark. Greasy dirt and gore streak her body.

 

And it feels like coming home.

 

_ “Where… am I? My sensors… this can't be right. Are you my Operator?” _

 


	2. Indelible

Blessed darkness.

Outside, she had felt the lack of Void acutely, but once the cylinder had closed around her, the smooth surfaces felt a little less  _ wrong. _ She still stumbles twice while trying to stand, but as she takes in her surroundings answers begin to push at the back of her mind. This thing, this… place... is familiar to her. It is shadowed, and cramped, but as she pushes to her feet small lights along the floor flare into life.

_ “Operator? I… have an Operator. No. I'm sorry. I- I don't quite understand what is happening.” _

She cannot answer the voice. The ugly soldiers had mouths. From hours spent peering at her reflection in a pool of cave-water, she knows she does not. She cannot make their sounds.

She answers somehow anyway.

“What are you?” She asks, shocking herself. The voice does not notice.

_ “I… I am Cephalon Gypsa. I am tasked with the decryption and analysis of Tenno field data. Where am I?”   _ Other lights flicker on and off with the voice, as if the room itself was trying to speak.

“I don't know. I don't remember. A red planet.” She grinds a hand against her metal brow. The headache is starting to return. Cephalon, Operator, Tenno. These words mean something to her. She does not remember where the pieces go, but she knows they fit, somewhere.

_“Red… Yes, Mars. And… a_ _Liset. Its sensors are... operable. We are in a depression on the surface, surrounded by Grineer.”_ The Cephalon's voice grows more agitated. Lights flicker. From somewhere beyond a shallow ramp, the metallic room is pervaded by a quiet hum.

_ “Engines, Remnant Drive, and life support are operable. Sensory suite, Void-mask, and communications arrays are damaged. All other systems are offline. Operator, the Grineer are rallying, we must leave!”   _ Lights flare with excruciating brightness, and the humming of the structure around her reaches a fever pitch. She sinks to her knees, clutching at her head.

“Aah, I… Do it, go!” She chokes out.

There is a deep, wrenching acceleration, and then a gentle wave of Void washes over her.

Instantly, he knife driving through her eyes into her skull has evaporated. She stands, shakily.

_ “I cannot apologize enough for causing you discomfort, Operator. The Grineer were approaching too quickly, and I was forced to cold-start the engines. They were drawing an ignition charge from whatever Void source they could reach.” _

“I-is that my name? Do you know who I am?” She manages, blinking. The angled wall behind her has become transparent. Where there should be only cliff-walls and wasteland, now there are a thousand stars. The sight should be breathtaking. She is too tired for breathtaking.

_ “You are my Operator. I… do not understand further. My memory and cognition systems are malfunctioning. I am Cephalon Gypsa. I am tasked with the decryption and analysis of Tenno field data.” _

__ This is getting me nowhere.  
  
There is little else of note in the Liset. There are exposed cables, damaged portions of bulkhead, and a single flickering light that slowly loses its battle with darkness.

“ _ Operator, I am receiving a transmission using an… archaic encryption. The connection is tenuous, but… I believe you'll want to see this.” _

She does.

The woman on the screen is achingly, terribly familiar. There is a name that matches that voice, a name that sparks along the back of her mind without true recall. But it is not 'Lotus.'

She leans wearily against the communications console and forces her attention back to the conversation.

“-leep for many years. The system has changed. There is much you will not recognize. In addition, memory loss is a common complication from extended periods of cryo-sleep.”

She nods. The Lotus is telling her nothing she does not know by now.

“Until I can gather more information, and find out how this happened, you need to lie low. I'm sending you the coordinates of an unused Orbiter module. It's been offline for many years, but Gypsa will have instructions for repair work.”

She nods again.

The Lotus hesitates.

“There is… much you do not know,” she says. “Much you will learn, about yourself and your people. The first Tenno woke only a few years ago. With most of the Orokin infrastructure in ruins, progress has been slow.”

For a long moment, the Lotus says nothing more. Then:

“I'll contact you again soon. Stay safe, my child.”

Words fail. It is all she can do to bow in response.

The transmission cuts out, and Gypsa says something about missing components and fragmented memory.

The ship moves, but her attention is elsewhere. Those words continue to echo for her. They are familiar. They, and that tone, belong to her.

_ My child. _

 

For all that she tries, Gypsa cannot put Operator's mind at easy as they approach the coordinates. Several hours spent several staring into space from the cramped fuselage of the landing craft have done nothing for her anxiety, either.

Beyond the window, the derelict Orbiter hangs silently in the blank starfield.

_ “Operator, the Orbiter's systems are unpowered. Docking will be imperfect without the magnetic seals engaged. Please exercise caution when accessing the boarding ramp.”   _ Gypsa says, concern evident in her voice.

Operator merely hums in response. She is too tired to process her relationship with the Cephalon right now.

The Liset slots into place with a reluctant and uncomfortable vibration.

Operator turns away from the viewport, and a ramp shudders downward with a hiss of vapor and the weight of long years. Inside is darkness and more organic, curved bulkheads. The smooth surfaces of the Orbiter's interior are familiar, even coated in a thin layer of frost.

More pieces of her. There are doors that do not open and machines that do not work- but they are as much a part of her as if they were hands and feet.

She kneels, head bowed in the silent darkness, for an uncounted length of time. It is long enough for her to feel more focused, at least. Long enough for her thoughts to order themselves. When she at last raises her head, the lights are on.

_ “The Orbiter's reactor has been re-engaged, Operator. Unfortunately, several systems suffered a purge of their memory when the ship lost power.” _

“What's broken?” Operator asks, pushing to her feet.

_ “Security protocol has rendered much of the ship inaccessible. I'm not sure what is beyond the doors. The Operator's personal quarters are available, however. I have taken the liberty of accelerating the activation of climate control within, if the Operator wishes to rest?”   _ Gypsa asks hopefully.

“I can go a little longer.” Operator says. “What am I looking at here?”

_ “Foundry and tech-mod stations. Both are online, although their databases have been purged and little of their resources remain usable,”   _ Gypsa replies.

“And this?” She asks, turning to the area along the back wall. Odd protrusions spring forth from the wall at her approach, and segments of the floor rearrange themselves for little visible effect.

_ “An Arsenal subsystem, designed to deploy and maintain a selection of weaponry. It also facilitates the deployment of Warframes from a storage area underneath.” _

_ Warframe. _

Operator shudders involuntarily at the word. She looks down at her hands, flexes the metal and feels the Void surging beneath. She doesn't understand- not yet- but this word is the key. This word is why she is here.

“Gypsa, get a screen working. I want to learn everything about… about Warframes.”

_ “Right away.” _

Operator strides back into the landing craft and leans against the Liset's wall while she reads. Large swathes of the data are corrupted and unreadable, pulled from the Cephalon's damaged memory and haphazardly pieced together using information packets left by the Lotus. It's not much, but it's enough to confirm her suspicions.

“Mesa. I am a Mesa.” If something feels wrong about these words, she does not notice. A slow elation is spreading throughout her body, limbs tingling as the Void flickers brighter with her emotion.

There is work to be done before the Lotus contacts them again with more answers, but for the first time since waking, Operator feels like she has found the path.

Beyond the viewscreen, the Origin system is waiting.

 

* * *

 

Transmission decrypting...  
Weave Translation Matrix// CORE  
Cephalon.Gypsa- Update/Response Order// Null-  
NET connected// TXT only. Metadata packet- LOST/CORRUPT  
Message begins:

__ Lotus-  
_ Received primer package and calibration suite. For myself, and on behalf of the Operator- thank you. I anticipate the contacts you provided to prove extremely useful, and plan to reach out within the next local solar cycle. _ __   
_ I have yet to isolate the holes in my memory left by the fragmentation of my systems. I do not recall being repurposed for use as a field Cephalon. Any information you may provide on this front would be extremely appreciated, although for the time being my precepts demand the entirety of my attention be directed to the Operator. _ __   
__   
Message ends.   
File.Echo: UNAVAILABLE. Metadata packet- LOST/CORRUPT   
Archival debridgement: FAILED// Auto-delete- initializing.   
Deletion successful.   
  


 


End file.
